


All the Marvelous Things We Planned

by AndThatWasEnough



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic, Endings Are Hard, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Slice of Life, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), Wayward Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndThatWasEnough/pseuds/AndThatWasEnough
Summary: Time marches on to the beat of its own drum, and we must follow it.Sam Winchester will gladly lead that band.  After all, what other choice does he have?{The years pass by and things change.  As it turns out, that's okay.  In fact, it's more than okay.}
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 42





	1. Shooting Star

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm still processing the finale, but my final verdict is that...I liked it. I really did. It broke my heart and was a little corny in places, but I feel like there are so many good things we got from it, and I wanted to play with those possibilities. Also, how cute are Little Dean and Miracle? Of course I had to write something about them!
> 
> Happy reading :)

_Seen a shooting star tonight_

_And I thought of me_

_If I was still the same_

_If I ever became what you wanted me to be_

_Did I miss the mark or over-step the line_

_That only you could see?_

_Seen a shooting star tonight_

_And I thought of me_

\- “Shooting Star”, Bob Dylan

xXx

The wound wasn’t the scariest one he had seen. Clean in-and-out through a vital organ that oozed too much blood. It was rebar. It wasn’t irreparable heart damage, or a chest ripped to ribbons, or a coffin at the bottom of the ocean. But it was the last one, and that’s always the one that gets you.

xXx

“Okay,” Sam finally breathes. He’s all cried out. He’s not sure how long it’s been, but he knows that at least for now, there are no tears left. 

Sam palms one of Dean’s cheeks. He tries to let himself fall into the old cliché, tell himself it just looks like he’s sleeping. And he kinda does, but a man who is sleeping is alive. Dean is dead.

_I love you so much. My baby brother._

Baby Brother sighs. Then he sets to work.

xXx

“One last ride,” Sam mutters, laying Dean in the backseat. It’s gonna be a helluva road trip. But he wants to put Dean to rest at home. The golden fields of Kansas, in the sunshine. In the sunflowers.

xXx

Sam does exactly what he’s supposed to do.

When their father died, they set out in the middle of the night, watched him burn, flames licking the night sky. Sam had been all snot and tears, and Dean had stood there, catatonic. He thought of his father, his mother, of Charlie and Bobby and even Asa Fox. And now his brother. Beloved brother, beautiful brother, big brother. Sam cleaned the wound, stitched it up. He changed him into clean clothes. He wrapped him carefully, stoically. He built his funeral pyre in the same way.

“Alright, Miracle. Let’s go, bub.”

Miracle knew what was going on. Animals always know. When Sam had come back to the bunker without Dean, Miracle seemed to know he wouldn’t be seeing him again. He’d never bound into Dean’s room again, tackle him on his bed, experience a love that was uniquely Dean’s. But Miracle had stuck by Sam’s side, standing guard at the door of the infirmary as Sam methodically prepared his brother’s body. He had taken to sleeping next to Sam, as well. Now, he followed him out behind the bunker, where Dean was waiting for them. In the sunshine and the sunflowers.

Sam had always wanted a dog. He had just never thought his brother would have to die to get one.

xXx

For some reason, Sam smiles this time. No tears. No snot. No gasping for breath.

Just a smile – and Miracle.

xXx

It’s quiet, after.

Dean knew how to take up space. Spoke from deep in his chest, sang too loudly to music played too loudly, clattered pots and pans, drove a gas-guzzling beast of a car, yelled when he needed to, laughed when he had to. His self-worth may have been in the basement, but in the same turn, Dean was never afraid to let people know he had arrived, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

Until now.

It’s one slice of toast, waking up at eight, pacing the halls with Miracle. Sam thinks on whether there was anything he could have done. What sort of witch was he? What sort of hunter? What sort of man, brother, son? It frustrated him more than anything in the world to think that maybe, just maybe, it didn’t have to be like this. Maybe he should have called that ambulance anyway.

But there was no changing things now.

Cas was gone. Jack was…everywhere and everything, but gone. 

Dean was gone.

Sam stopped in front of Dean’s room. He wanted to go in.

He didn’t this time.

xXx

People were still calling Special Agent Bon Jovi. A dead man was still getting cases.

And that’s when Sam remembered he hadn’t told anybody.

xXx

He leaves. He _has_ to leave.

Sam packs up his things: he raids Dean’s room to get Miracle’s stuff, a few of his shirts, the pictures he kept, the dog-eared Vonnegut, the legal pads covered in his blocky handwriting, his gun; he grabs everything from his own dresser, his memory box, the novels, his gun; he grabs the pictures from the library; he goes into Cas’s room and takes the keyring to his truck; he goes into Jack’s, crying a little, and grabs Marvelous Marvin and that damned pencil. It all miraculously fits in just the big duffel bag, like the night he left for Stanford. He’s started over before – he can do it again. This time, he won’t be alone. (And no, he’s not talking about the urn with his brother’s remains.)

Miracle sits beside him in the passenger seat of the Impala while he thinks. He _could_ go to Austin, take care of the situation. Dean would tell him to; Dad would tell him to. Problem is, they’re not here. It’s just Sam and Miracle. 

Something’s holding him back. Stopping him. 

Not something. A definite thing, nothing nebulous. Sam doesn’t want to hunt without Dean. It’s just better to have a partner, anyways, and Dean was literally the best partner in the world.

“What do you think, huh, boy?” Sam asks Miracle, and he whines. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

Sam picks up the phone and dials. On the other end of the line, Donna sounds positively cheery. He can’t help but smile a little, glad that she’s back, glad that she at least sounds happy.

“Hey, Donna…yeah, yeah, I heard. Huh? Oh – yeah. Well, uh…Donna, about that…there’s something I gotta tell you…”

xXx

Sam tells everybody.

He starts with Donna. Then it’s Jody and the girls. Then Charlie and Stevie, then Garth and Bess, even Donatello. Every living contact he can think of. The conversations all sort of go the same way:

_Dean, uh, he passed away. Few days ago. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. It was just…yeah. A lot to deal with. I know, I know. Uh – vamp hunt. No, it wasn’t the vamp directly. He sorta got…impaled on some rebar. Yeah, I know. I know. It wasn’t too long, no. Just a few minutes. Thank you. Seriously, it means a lot to hear that. I dunno, I might do something. I already cremated him, but…yeah, I need a little time. I’ll let you know. For sure. Just, uh…before you go, just…thanks for being a part of his life. Yeah, I hope he’s somewhere good, too. Alright. Alright. I’ll call soon. Bye._

By the time Sam’s done, it’s dark, and Miracle is resting his head in his lap. Sam’s been sitting parked for hours, and now it’s silent again, and he stares out the windshield. He could still go to Austin, he supposes, but Donna already said she would put somebody else on it. She had been great – they all had been. Jody was already telling him he needed to come for dinner. Sam would take her up on it, but not today.

There was only one person he hadn’t told, only one place to go.

xXx

Sam arrives in Hastings at something like five in the morning, and he knows she isn’t up yet. So, like a peeping tom, he just sits in the Impala outside her house for a couple hours, absentmindedly scratching the top of Miracle’s head. He really is a good dog. Sam’s glad Dean brought him home. Miracle wakes up antsy, and Sam lets him out to pee against a tree. It’s while he’s standing there waiting for him to finish, sniff at the flowers, that she comes out of the house to get the paper.

Eileen stands on her front stoop with her arms crossed over her chest. She looks confused, and squints at Sam as he stares at her over the hood of the Impala.

_You look pretty,_ he signs, and she rolls her eyes, but she looks flattered, nonetheless. Eileen doesn’t think she looks that pretty right now, not this early in the morning, but who is she to ignore a compliment? 

“What are you doing here?” She asks. “You know what time it is, right?”

“I drove all night,” he says, and whistles to Miracle.

That’s when Eileen realizes something is wrong. She should have known as soon as she saw the Impala without Dean, but Miracle settles it. Dean and Miracle had been inseparable from the time he had brought the dog home. But she doesn’t ask, doesn’t press, just watches as Sam and Miracle cross the street at a leisurely pace, not worrying about any morning traffic – it’s a quiet street. Sam comes to a stop right in front of her, and Miracle obediently sits beside him. Sam gives her a sad smile.

“Mind if I stay for a while?”

Eileen has her suspicions, but he’s not ready yet. When he’s ready, he’ll tell her. “Of course,” is all she says, and takes Sam’s head in her hands and kisses his forehead. When she pulls away, his eyes are closed, and he’s holding onto her wrists. She pulls away to tuck a loose strand of hair behind his ear. “I’ve got coffee on.”

Sam kisses her fingers. She knows what that means.

xXx

As advertised, there’s coffee, and morning news with closed captioning. Sam and Eileen sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, Miracle at their feet. Sam’s jacket is hanging by the door and he’s drinking out of the same mug he always drinks out of when he comes to see her. It’s so natural, the two of them together. Miracle looks happy for the change of scenery, his tail wagging and thumping against Eileen’s leg. She doesn’t mind.

Eileen does wonder, however, how long _awhile_ is going to be. She secretly hopes it’s forever, and then instantly regrets it. Thinks she’s being selfish. But then Sam says,

“I’ve, uh. Got some stuff in the car. Do you mind if I…?”

“Go ahead,” she says, smiling. “My home is your home.”

Sam pauses. “Miracle, too?”

A single nod. “Miracle, too.”

xXx

Miracle’s silver dishes now sit in Eileen’s kitchen. Sam takes him running in the morning, before Eileen is even up, and he makes the coffee and the eggs and the bacon and two slices of toast. They work on his signing, and he consults his dictionary every night before bed. Their conversations are getting quieter and quieter the better Sam gets, but dig deeper every time. They talk about the books on their nightstands, the latest episode of whatever they watched, how grateful they’re going to be when Joe Biden is president. Eileen loves having him in her bed, and thinks she should invest in one long enough that he doesn’t have to bend his knees. Thinks of stopping by Target and picking up some odds and ends for him, like a bathrobe, maybe. She starts thinking about the future; she can’t stop herself. But she doesn’t want to get ahead of herself, either. Sam needs to set the pace here – he’s lost nearly everything, after all.

It takes a week, which is longer than she would have liked, but she understands. One morning, the two of them are sitting at the kitchen table, and Eileen’s working on the crossword when Sam covers her hand with his and she looks up. Caps her pen.

Sam’s eyes are a bit red, and he doesn’t seem to know quite how to say it. He swallows convulsively, fighting against tears. Eileen lets him take his time. She doesn’t know quite how he’s going to say it, but she knows that he’s finally ready. It’s time.

“Eileen.”

“Sam.”

He clears his throat _. It’s okay_ , Sam tells himself. His chin wobbles as he tells her, “Dean died last week.”

Eileen doesn’t say anything. Sam doesn’t need her to; he knows she’s known ever since he showed up outside her door, but it feels like a weight off his chest to say it out loud.

All she has to do is nod, and Sam comes apart.

xXx

Sam cries for so long, so hard, that by the end of it, he’s dizzy. He doesn’t know when the two of them sunk to the linoleum floor, but suddenly Eileen is shoving a glass of water in his face and telling him to drink. Her eyes are a little red, too. Sam coughs a little, and Miracle slinks under the table and rests by his side, sensing he needs him. The three of them sit together on the floor, Sam and Eileen hand-in-hand while he drinks his water. Here was the snot, here were the tears that were missing from the day he cremated Dean.

He takes in a shuddering breath. “Do you…do you think we should have a memorial, or something?”

Eileen hates that her heart skips a beat at _we_. 

“It’s not such a bad idea,” she says. “So many people loved him. They deserve a chance to pay their respects.” She squeezes Sam’s hand. “They’ll want to see you, too.”

Sam thinks on it a moment, then nods, resolute. “Okay,” he sighs. “Then that’s what we’ll do. But I need to show you something first.”

xXx

Dean Winchester is now set on Eileen’s kitchen table.

“I’m worried people aren’t going to get it,” Sam confides in her.

Eileen studies the urn. She crosses her arms and gives it a good once-over. “I think the racecars are a nice touch.”

Through puffy eyes, Sam’s grin appears like the sun after the storm.

xXx

People come.

Eileen’s quiet block is lined with cars. Sam’s forgotten how word spreads, how many people they know, how he and his brother are maybe sorta kinda legendary. Most of them bring food, at least, and liquor, and the neighbors only complain about the noise once. It’s a bit of a tight fit, but it doesn’t matter because with each familiar face Sam sees, it feels like his heart grows three sizes. Donna brings a box of powdered donuts, and it makes him smile.

That’s what doesn’t make any sense. Sam’s been smiling when he feels he shouldn’t, and crying when he least expects to. He has grieved before, but there’s no making sense of it this time. So the donuts make him smile, but the story Garth tells about his and Dean’s first hunt together has him sneaking off to the bathroom to sob quietly into his fist.

Miracle is a good funeral dog. Memorial dog? Wake dog? Whatever they were calling it, Miracle and Dean were the stars of the show. He sat by Dean’s urn all night long, the urn with the stupid racecars on it, wagging his tail and panting happily and letting people pat on him and hug him all night long without making a fuss. Bess and Garth’s kids can’t keep their hands off him, petting too hard and getting him around the neck, but Miracle takes it all.

“You need a good dog,” he overhears Charlie say at some point. “This is a good dog.”

Well, Dean always was a good judge of character.

xXx

“Thanksgiving,” Jody orders. “You’re coming for Thanksgiving. Maybe Christmas, too. Hear me?”

Sam and Eileen laugh. Sam’s got his arm draped around her waist, and Eileen just feels right. “We’ll be there with bells on.”

Again – the magic We.

Jody studies Sam’s face closely, and Sam studies her back. She’s changed over the years, like they all have. Her hair is shorter, has more grey, and she gets more sure of herself with every passing year, with every new person she finds to love. Sam, too, is not the same shaggy-haired twenty-something who helped her through one of the worst nights of her life. Ten years later, and here they were. Jody reaches out and grabs his hand.

“He was a good man, Sam. We’re going to miss him.”

xXx

Sam and Eileen watch – of all things – _Field of Dreams_ that night. It’s what’s on TV. Everyone is gone, but Dean’s urn remains on the side table behind the couch. Miracle is sleeping under him, keeping watch for Dean one last time. Sam grabs them a couple of beers and Eileen reheats leftovers (Alex makes a surprisingly good vegan lasagna) and sets the tray between them on the couch, and they go at it. They watch Kevin Costner build a baseball diamond in the corn.

“Dad hated the Yankees.”

Eileen doesn’t know much about John Winchester. The fact that he apparently hated the Yankees is now one of the few things she can say about him with confidence. It will likely always be one of the only things she can say about him with confidence.

“Yeah?”

Sam nods, and since his mouth is full, he signs. _Big time. Could not stand them. Not even because he liked the Red Sox. I think he liked every team but the Yankees._

He’s getting much better, and fast. Sam’s a quick study. Eileen figures he must have been practicing on his own, before he came here. _Did you and your brother like baseball?_ She asks. Sam shrugs.

“Sure,” he says. “Dean was more of a football guy. We saw some games.”

It’s not much, but already Sam feels a little better. Some of the tension has left his shoulders, and he’s remembering to breathe. He can say something about how his brother liked football and not loose his shit. He takes another stab at the lasagna. Sam’s not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but he’s going to be hitting Alex up for this recipe. Dean would have scoffed, but he also would have made it if Sam asked.

_This was the right thing to do. I’m glad we did it,_ he signs.

_Me, too_.

xXx

It really was the right thing to do. The next day, Sam wakes up, rolls out of bed in his boxers, doesn’t bother with the run. Everything about yesterday wore him out, from the wake to Kevin Costner just wanting to have a catch with his old man. Sam can’t remember ever playing catch with his dad. Dean played T-ball when he was little; he had probably had a catch with John.

Speaking of dead brothers, Sam is still up before Eileen, and as he waits on the coffee, he sits down at the table and stares at the urn. The Urn with the Racecars. Sam had thought Dean would appreciate that, think it’s funny. Everyone who came to the wake got a good laugh out of it. Mission accomplished, then.

Miracle is still sleeping underneath Dean, faithful as always to the man who rescued him.

xXx

“Thanks.”

Eileen raises an eyebrow. “For what?”

“For…everything,” Sam shrugs. “I’ve probably been a pain in the ass the past couple weeks.”

She actually laughs. “Are you kidding? If that’s you at your worst, then I’d love to see you at your best.”

He tries to smile, he does. “Yeah, well, my worst was pretty damn bad, so.”

Eileen can only imagine.

xXx

In an almost unspoken way, as the days and weeks pass and the Impala remains parked outside and Miracle’s silver dishes sit in the kitchen and Sam lays in Eileen’s bed and Dean sits on the side table, it becomes clear to both of them that this…this is Forever. Sam had already been toying with the idea after they had defeated Chuck and Jack had brought everybody back. He had brought Eileen’s car back to her and they had hugged each other so tightly that they didn’t even need to say the whole _I missed you_ , _I was worried about you_ , _thank god you’re okay_ spiel. It was just a given. 

But Sam had still gone back to the bunker, where he found Dean and Miracle passed out together in the Dean Cave, and just the sight of his brother with a sleepy smile on his face and a dog on his lap was enough to convince him to stay for the time being, even if his heart was trying to pull him elsewhere. Just long enough to make sure that everything would be okay.

Before it all went down, it had sure felt that way. Dean had applied for a mechanic job at the body shop in town, was sleeping more, smiling more. He was the happiest he had been in a long time. Sam was happy, too. That’s why he had let his mind wander, think of other possibilities. Maybe Eileen could come stay with them, like before; maybe they could get a place in town; maybe they could go back and forth between Lebanon and Hastings. Sam was dizzy with the potential of everything, and before they left for Ohio, he was certain Dean was going to be okay. He had Miracle, and he was going to have a job, and he was going to be okay. Sam knew this because when Dean smiled, with all his teeth and the smile lines around his eyes, it was like Dean was telling him it was going to be okay, too.

In the end, though, it was Sam who had to tell him that. Who had to tell him that it was okay, that he could go now, that his work here was done. That he had done so, so good. Sam had been able to tell how scared Dean really was, so he stayed with him and told him everything he needed to hear, and all of it was true.

Because somehow, things… _were_ okay. Sorta, at least. They were getting better. Sam wakes up every morning and sees Eileen beside him, and knows this was always going to happen, one way or another. She and he, him and her – they were always going to end up here. Because they wanted it. Not because someone else said so, but because _they_ said so.

They lay facing each other, and Sam signs, _I feel so guilty._

_Why?_

_Because I’m here and they’re not. He’s not. He had plans. He was going to have a job. A real job that paid him._

_I didn’t know that._

_It’s true. We both had plans. But while I get to have mine, he doesn’t get to have his._

“What _are_ your plans?” Eileen whispers. She knows what she would like him to say. She also thinks maybe she should have said something about how Sam shouldn’t feel guilty, that the world can be cruel, thinks its jokes are funny. They both know loss, know what it means to Remember. As your life goes on, and you start to forget them, it feels unfair to let them fade as your presence becomes stronger. But that’s the way it is.

Sam is shy and his fingers fumbling when he signs, _I was thinking even before it happened about you and me._

_What about you and me?_

This is going to be so hard. Not being with Eileen, but letting himself take that first step into a life after Cas, after Jack. After Dean. Once he does it, there’s going to be no going back.

“I mean…” Sam sighs and pushes himself up against the headboard. How to say this? “I _mean_ …” 

“I love you.”

Sam thinks his heart stops. He thinks it stops for maybe a full minute. All he can do is stare at Eileen wide-eyed like an idiot while she just smiles at him. It was that easy? It was _that_ easy? 

It was that easy.

Eileen shrugs. “Just thought you should know.”

Sam starts breathing again. He lifts his right hand and positions his fingers in the shape of an L, lifts his pinkie finger. “Just thought you should know,” Sam says, eyes stinging.

That’s all they need to know. They don’t need to make any concrete plans. The plan is to love each other and see where that takes them.

xXx

It takes them all over.

xXx

It takes them, briefly, back to the bunker.

“I’m kinda embarrassed,” Sam says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Ya know, since I kinda already…did the whole dramatic exit. But I think we should finish clearing out the rooms.”

Walking back into the dark bunker is strange, and it feels like when he and Dean first showed up seven years ago. The last occupants had left halfway through a game of chess and a cup of coffee; Sam and Miracle had left in a cloud of grief and uncertainty. It had only been a couple months, but it already didn’t feel like home anymore. Sam had always struggled with coming to terms with this place being _home_ , something that had come to Dean so easily, but it had been at the end. 

It just wasn’t anymore.

Eileen takes to packing up the rest of Sam’s room and deep cleans the kitchen, disgusted by the long-expired food that had gone forgotten in the industrial fridge, and goes ahead and throws out all the boxes and tins on the shelves. She boxes the aprons: a plain white one that goes round the waist, a striped one, ones with Santa and flowers and pumpkins. She stares at the kitchen table, thinks about sitting there for hours and waiting for the three of them to return from Hell. Remembers standing at the island cutting fruit while Sam stood behind her working on eggs. It all seems like so long ago – but it had been maybe a year.

How quickly things change.

Sam’s room is easier. Eileen makes the bed, gathers the trash, cleans up the sink. She unplugs the TV and DVD player, and Sam is doing the same in Dean’s room so they can give them to a secondhand store. She boxes whatever clothes he had forgotten. In another box, Eileen puts in Sam’s notebooks, his research, the little odds and ends on his desk such as the magnifying glass and letter opener (who the hell was sending Sam letters?) 

Checking the room one last time before she takes everything out to the car, Eileen finds in one of his desk drawers a stack of papers. She doesn’t think much of them at first, but as she flips through the pages, her eyes widen.

Oh, yeah – she’ll be talking to Sam about this.

xXx

Sam’s job is harder.

He starts with Cas and Jack’s rooms – they’re much more sparse. Really all that’s left in Cas’s room are a couple of bright blue ties, and Sam is taken aback because he hadn’t known Cas needed backups. He finds that picture of him and Dean, creased and tattered, that Sam had once found in Cas’s trenchcoat. He smirks and slips it into his back pocket.

Jack’s room is a little harder. Each room is a little harder, really. Cas’s room was utilitarian, an excess comfort for a being who didn’t sleep. But Sam found sticky fingerprints on the surfaces in Jack’s room, candy bars, and a stack of drawings in a drawer that made Sam’s heart leap into his throat. Most of the world doesn’t know this, but God is a three-year-old who loves _Star Wars_ and draws pictures on notebook paper; who kept a picture of his mother beside his bed and loved nougat; who sometimes still wrote his K’s backwards.

Sam was going to be putting some of those pictures in frames. He swore it. The drawings were coming with him, each of them signed at the bottom with his name, complete with backwards K.

“Oh, Jack…” He breathes. “Oh, kiddo.” 

The lights flicker, and Sam looks up and wipes his eyes. He knows that was him. Jack is everywhere, after all. Just not where he should be.

Sam finishes packing up the rest of Jack’s clothes to donate, and moves on to the last room.

Dean’s room.

Miracle is already sleeping on top of the bed, looking a little mopey. They’re donating all of Dean’s clothes that Sam didn’t keep – sentimental reasons, and all that; it was all for sentimental reasons – so those get boxed. Sam grabs Dean’s journal, and the paperwork for the job he never got to start. He boxes up Dean’s beloved vinyl, and stares at the turntable for ages. That’s the one that’s getting him. Memories of his brother singing poorly at the top of his lungs, blasting Led Zeppelin, drumming his hands on the steering wheel, playing air guitar. 

Dean wanted to be a Rockstar. He wanted to be Jimi Hendrix. He wanted things he never got.

“We should take it.”

Sam looks over at Eileen leaning in the doorway. “You think?” He asks.

She nods. “Total perk of living with a deaf person is that you can play whatever you want and I won’t complain.”

They take it.

xXx

They think about taking the table. The one with the names on it.

They leave it. Mostly because they don’t have a moving van. Leave it for the ages.

xXx

Sam locks the door, and that’s it. They both know that’s it. The cars are packed, they’ve got boxes full of things to donate, and the rest is coming back with them. Sam may be the sole survivor, but the rest of them would not go forgotten. He won’t allow it.

When they get back to Hastings, they sit on the couch watching another Kevin Costner baseball movie – _Bull Durham_ , much funnier – with a box of pizza and Eileen asks,

“So – what’s next?”


	2. Miracle of Miracles

_But of all God's miracles large and small,_

_The most miraculous one of all_

_Is the one I thought could never be:_

_God has given you to me._

\- “Miracle of Miracles”, _Fiddler on the Roof_

xXx

Autumn arrives. Jody has already called, told them that they need to get to her place the day before Thanksgiving at the latest, and Eileen has already promised to bring Guinness and the best pecan pie any of them have ever tasted – it was Dean’s favorite, after all, so it’s in his honor. Sam’s surprised to learn she can bake, and Eileen just rolls her eyes at him. 

“Just because you can’t do more than scramble eggs and boil pasta doesn’t mean the rest of us are totally inept in the kitchen. Maybe you should learn.”

Yeah, maybe he should. Sam smiles at her sheepishly. He’d never really had to learn how to do more than that because he was either eating in dining halls and diners, or Dean was cooking. The kitchen had been his happy place. Well, one of them, anyway. Sam didn’t realize how much he would miss his brother’s cooking. There were days he craved mac and cheese with marshmallow fluff, or he would think of that ugly, beautiful birthday cake he made for Jack’s third birthday. A ping would register in his heart, a flash of hurt, but…but he was trying. He was trying to move on.

Amazingly, it was working. Sam was doing it. By the grace of God, Miracle the Wonder Dog, and the woman next to him.

xXx

Eileen’s sitting out back one morning in one of the lawn chairs, papers in hand. Sam watches her for a moment through the sliding door, watches Miracle run around the backyard. It’s one of the rare mornings she’s up before him. Sam pours himself another cup of coffee and slips into his shoes. It’s cold, and they’re expecting snow tonight. He has no idea how Donna has lived like this her whole life. But that’s probably just his inner wannabe-yuppie who was such a pussy about the cold that he lived in California for four years. Never again, though. Never again.

Sam waves to get Eileen’s attention and settles into the chair next to her. _Aren’t you cold?_

She gestures to her fleece and the blanket on her lap. _I’m good._

_Couldn’t sleep?_

Eileen shakes her head. _Just up early._

_What are you reading?_

She smiles, and it’s that smile she dons when she’s about to be a smartass. Sam knows that smile well by now. “Oh, nothing. Just a sampling of a little-known author by the name of Sam Winchester.”

Sam blushes and clears his throat while Eileen laughs at him. “Jesus, Eileen…where the hell did you even get that?” He asks.

“Found it cleaning out your room. It’s really good! Why didn’t you tell me you were a writer?”

“I’m _not_ ,” Sam insists. “I’m as much a writer as I am the president, which is to say I’m not. So. Yeah.”

“I don’t know…you seem like a writer to me.”

Sam fidgets in his chair. He whistles for Miracle, and he comes bounding over for pats. A lot of that stuff is old, just crap, really. He’d been writing dumb shit on and off for years, ever since he was in high school. It was just something to do. “I don’t know,” he says as he rubs Miracle’s back. “It’s just stuff.”

Eileen shrugs. “I don’t know about that. I like the story about the diner. It was so sad, the whole thing with the waitress.”

He can’t help himself. She’s drawing him in – she’s good at that. “Really?” He asks, and Eileen nods earnestly. “We met so many women on the road, doing that thankless job. I always felt awful when we couldn’t tip.” Sam looks at her funny. “You really liked it? Like, you’re not just saying that.”

“I’m not just saying that, Sam,” she assures him with a grin. “You know…I’m not saying you have to write the next great American novel, but you _are_ good at this. And we need to start looking into finding work. Someone’s going to catch onto the fake credit card eventually, and we’re not exactly hunting anymore.”

Sam scoffs. “We’re not _not_ hunting.”

Eileen gives him a tired look. “The last time we hunted was three months ago, and it took us two days. All I’m saying is that…you know, maybe you should send some of these off, for starters. Go from there.”

When Sam doesn’t say anything, she adds, “Just think about it, okay?”

Think about it. He can do that.

xXx

They’ve stopped for gas on the way to Sioux Falls for Thanksgiving and Sam says, “You’re right, about the hunting thing.”

Of course she is. Eileen doesn’t say that, but of course she is. “Yeah?”

“I can’t…I can’t do it without Dean,” he admits to her. “It’s not you, you’re…” He huffs one of his short little laughs. “You’re amazing at it, Eileen, and every time we’ve worked together has been great. I just…”

“That’s how you lost him,” she finishes for him. “I get it.”

Sam smiles his thanks. Eileen doesn’t say – at least not now – that she doesn’t want to do it anymore, either. She selfishly wants Sam Winchester all to herself for as long as they can have each other. She doesn’t want there to come a day where he’s the one impaled on the rebar, doesn’t want to have to say goodbye to him like that, or vice-versa. They lost each other once – twice, really – and she doesn’t want to lose him, not ever again.

As Sam pays for the gas, he goes on. “But I don’t know what to do next.”

Eileen rolls her eyes so hard she thinks they might fall out. She loves him dearly, but Sam can be _seriously_ frustrating. The most fearsome hunter left on the planet, and he’s this timid. “ _Send off some of those stories_ ,” she says, repeating herself. “They’re _good_. I’m not just saying that. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

Sam purses his lips and totters his head. “I might need you to tell me how good they are a few more times.”

Eileen pops him in the arm and he laughs, for real this time.

xXx

Jody’s happy to see them – so happy, in fact, she cries a little. She’s waiting for them in the driveway as they pull up, greets them with soul-crushing hugs, and gets them inside, shows them the guest room she’s made up for them and goes on at length with Eileen about the menu. They’re eating at three, and she and Donna are handling the turkey, Eileen is on dessert duty, Alex is in charge of the sides, Patience has a bread recipe she wants to try, and Claire and Kaia have been told to just stay out of the way – Sam would do well to join them.

He really should learn his way around a kitchen.

Sam remembers celebrating Thanksgiving with Mrs. Butters, with Jack, with Dean. As great as Mrs. Butters was, as great as it was to have Jack and Dean with him, Sam wakes up on Thanksgiving morning and feels, well, _thankful_. There’s kneading and chopping and good smells coming out of the kitchen, and all of them are laughing and look so _happy_.

“Hey – skeezer. Come watch the parade.”

Claire and Kaia are watching the Macy’s parade out in the living room, and Sam joins them. Both girls still look half asleep, but content. They watch Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie, and Al Roker narrate everything that’s going on in the parade, and Sam nearly falls back asleep. He’s just so damn comfortable at Jody’s. He looks over to his left, sees the chair Dean sat on the arm of while Sam rallied the troops against the British; the dining room where his mother had sat, brainwashed, and he and his brother had bore witness to the most awkward sex talk ever. Sam saw the photos, too, of Jody and the girls, Jody and Donna, Jody and her husband. Her little boy.

Sioux Falls had always been home, be it at Bobby’s or Jody’s. A constant nearly all their lives.

They sit right at three for dinner. There’s turkey and green bean casserole and potatoes and the rolls Patience made from scratch and more. They all squeeze in around the table, and Miracle sits at Sam’s feet, ready for table scraps just like Dean used to give him. Sam is more than happy to oblige. 

“Before we eat, I think we should all say what we’re thankful for, don’t’cha think?” Donna suggests, and there are a couple of eye rolls from the girls, but Jody thinks it’s a great idea.

So that’s what they do. They go around the table saying what they’re thankful for. The girls sort of kid around, trying to make each other laugh, saying they’re grateful for things like the new Starbucks downtown and the cute guy who moved in down the block. Jody rolls her eyes, but lets it slide. She and Donna say the standard fare, thankful that they can all be together under one roof, but Eileen surprises when she smiles at Sam and says she’s thankful for new beginnings.

And he has to follow her.

All eyes are on him, like everyone expects him to say that he’s got nothing to be thankful for after everything that’s happened, but that’s just not true. It hurts like a bitch to admit it, but Sam is still here. And for the first time in a while, he’s _glad_ he’s still here, brother or no brother. He just hopes Dean can forgive him for that. He hopes Cas and Jack can forgive him for that, too, wherever they are.

He clears his throat because he’s already getting a little choked up, and he squeezes Jody’s hand extra hard. “Thankful for my girls,” he says, mostly to the table, and they all melt. Eileen’s eyes are soft, and Donna gets up to throw her arms around his neck. “And Miracle.”

Miracle barks when he hears his name, and, laughing, they take that as their cue to eat.

xXx

By the time Sam and Eileen stumble to bed that night, they’ve both had a little too much wine and are getting a little handsy. Being together is as natural as breathing at this point, and they keep quiet. They have to keep quiet, of course, or they’ll be found out, but they can’t help it – they have to be together, this night of all nights. 

Pulling back from a kiss, Sam whispers, “I love you,” before he remembers himself. He leans back and signs it to her, his hand a little shaky. _I love you_.

 _To new beginnings_ , Eileen signs back.

xXx

Sam tells Jody all about his new woes as they’re packing up leftovers, the only thing he’s good for in a kitchen. He talks about needing to find work if he and Eileen aren’t going to go out on hunts anymore, and about the stories, and how he just doesn’t know what to do. It’s a theme with him these days.

It’s Claire who has the idea as she strolls in to grab a piece of Eileen’s pecan pie, which really was good.

“You lived in an underground library, why don’t you just become a librarian?”

Sam snaps the lid on the Tupperware and pauses. “Huh.”

xXx

They stop in to see Charlie on the way home. Sam’s head is once again spinning with possibilities, and Charlie is the person to go to when it comes down to the logistics of things. If he were to do this for real, he would need about two more years to get his master’s in library sciences, and he needs to decide on where he would like to do that. Charlie has already helped him and Eileen fabricate all the proper paperwork they need over the past few months, so what’s a few adjustments to his undergraduate degree and school records?

“Eileen said you write, too.”

Sam glances over to where Eileen and Stevie are talking in the living room. “She did, huh?”

“Yeah,” Charlie nods. “She sent me a few.” Sam’s jaw drops. “You’re really good! You should consider sending them off.”

Sam rubs a hand down his face. “Well, we’ll see. Am I good to go?”

Charlie taps on her keyboard for a few more moments and then smiles at him. “You’re good. Go and be the man of letters that you were meant to be.”

xXx

Something about the cooler weather encourages them to sleep in, to lay in bed late. The world is white with snow, icicles hang from the eaves, and at night the street is lit by Christmas lights. Sam researches master’s programs and literary journals while Eileen lays beside him and traces lazy circles on his thigh. Miracle lies at the foot of the bed, his head on Sam’s feet as he dreams of chasing birds and getting loved on by Dean. 

Sam has spent winters in Minnesota before, back when they would stay with Pastor Jim in Blue Earth. He has distinct memories of the bedroom he and Dean used to share, with its twin brass beds and the thick quilts Pastor Jim’s housekeeper, Shirley, would make them with. That room was cold in the winters, the whole house was, and he and Dean would sit by the heater or the fireplace in wool socks that Shirley made them wear. He misses Shirley, sometimes as much as he misses Dean. Another person they lost contact with over the years. But she had loved them, he and Dean knew that. Sam has vague memories of being young and sitting on her lap as she read to him and rocked him. On winter days like this one, Dean would get stuck chopping wood and Sam would sit in the parish house reading, and Shirley would make grilled cheese on homemade bread with tomato soup, or smothered chicken with potatoes, pork chops with greens. Food was love.

Maybe that’s where Dean learned it – from Shirley.

“What are you learning?”

She sounds tired. She has for the past couple weeks. It’s worrying Sam a little, but he hasn’t said anything yet. _What do you think about Ann Arbor?_

_Ann Arbor?_

_University of Michigan has one of the best programs in the country. And Guy Fieri has been there like seven times._ Eileen slowly sits up, forcing Miracle to reposition himself. Her face asks her question. _I have to apply, obviously. It’s just a thought_.

 _You will get in_ , she signs, expression sure. _Now it’s just a matter of it being what you want._

_But what about what you want?_

_I can live here, or I can live in Michigan. I just want to be with you. We can do that anywhere._

Sam’s stomach flutters and Eileen smiles. _Maybe Ann Arbor, then_.

xXx

Yes, Ann Arbor definitely.

Sam applies to U of M’s master’s program as Samuel Campbell, and they look at houses online. They need to be there before the fall, and they find a two-story built in the thirties, with a yard for Miracle and, well, a _brown_ picket fence. They could drive to Lake Michigan if they wanted, or up to the UP. They can play tourist in Traverse City and Mackinac. There are plans now, so _many_ plans. Down payments and loans, picking dates to move, packing the house. Eileen starts thinking about what she might want to do when they get there, while Sam spends the next two years studying.

As the days pass, she thinks she might have an answer to that question.

xXx

They go to Grantsburg for Christmas. Garth and Bess want to see them. Sam wants to introduce Eileen to his and Cas’ namesakes, as well, and the kids are more than happy to see Miracle again. The Fitzgeralds do up an amazing Christmas tree, and the whole house looks like something out of a Currier and Ives print. The twins have grown like weeds and are walking and talking now, and Gertie tells Sam and Eileen all school and what she put on her wish list. At one point, Sam overhears her asking Bess if it’s okay to talk to Uncle Sam about Uncle Dean, if he’s too sad about it still. Sam’s feels his heart in his throat, but he still tells Gertie that it’s okay, anyway. Dean’s not coming back, and he’s getting used to that fact, even if it still hurts. It gets a little easier each day to think about him, to talk about him. Sam never thought it would, but here he was.

Though Sam doesn’t notice, Eileen watches this interaction closely. She watches him with Gertie, with the boys, and thinks and thinks and thinks.

“They have so much more hair,” Sam muses as he holds Little Sam, who is just as squirmy and interested in touching Big Sam’s face as he was last time.

“Don’t they?” Beth laughs. “It’s crazy. Every day it’s something new with them.”

Eileen sits next to Big Sam and Little Sam, Little Castiel in her lap. He’s a lot calmer than his brother, has a sweet smile when he chooses to show it. Eileen didn’t know Big Cas for very long, but he had been calm, and kind, and spoke to her in ASL. He told her he was in fact fluent in every language, living and dead, and the few conversations between just the two of them were told with quick fingers and knowing smiles. 

Little Sam and Cas have big shoes to fill.

xXx

Bess insists on going to Christmas Eve mass. It’s more of a tradition than anything, and the church is beautiful at night. There’s a lot of singing, and Sam holds Eileen’s hand tight while she leans against his side, watching the spectacle. Sam hears everything that’s going on, sits and stands and kneels when he’s supposed to, feels sleepy and safe in a way he hasn’t in a church in a long time.

He knows why that is.

 _Can you hear me, Jack?_ He prays. He prays nearly the entire mass, but not about the Madonna or the Baby Jesus in the manger. _Because I hear you tonight. You be good, okay? You keep an eye on Dean for me, make sure he stays out of trouble. I know you’re with us tonight. You’re with us every day. I know it. But I still miss you. I miss you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you._

Sam sends Jack all the love he should have sent him while he was still with them, and when the candles glow a little brighter and the singing sounds a little sweeter and Eileen smiles up and him and squeezes his hand a little tighter, Sam hopes that’s Jack telling him he loves him back.

xXx

“You’re really good with kids.”

Sam looks up from the dishes and gives a self-deprecating smile. “Thanks. I don’t know, though. Dean was always the best with them. He loved kids.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Eileen says, and she passes him another dish to dry. “You’re so sweet to them.”

Sam actually blushes.

Dinner was an interesting affair, to say the least. Well, the food, at least. There was all the typical Christmas food – or, what Sam and Eileen assume is typical, so really just the same as Thanksgiving food but with a ham in place of a turkey – with a few cow hearts on top of that. Sam’s glad to keep a little bit of weird in his life, though. Would it be his life if there weren’t a of couple monsters, friendly or otherwise?

He prefers the friendly ones, obviously, and Garth and Bess are two of the best he knows – two of the best _people_ he knows, period. Two of the kindest.

Suddenly, Eileen stops washing and dries her hand on a dishtowel. Sam isn’t getting the hint, so she looks up at him and jerks her head. “Come on. I have something for you.”

Sam furrows his brow. “But we already opened all the presents.”

Eileen shakes her head and grabs him by the hand, leading him out to the living room, sits him on the couch by the tree. It really is a good tree, and Sam can’t help but stare at it as Eileen goes to her bag and pulls out a small package wrapped in white paper with delicate snowflakes and silver ribbon. She hands it to Sam. “Merry Christmas.”

Sam’s confused. He looks up at her, and she gestures for him to open it. He carefully undoes the ribbon and meticulously undoes the wrapping paper. The package is wrapped so beautifully he doesn’t want to just rip it open, the way Dean would have – the way Dean and Jack _did_ when they celebrated Christmas with Mrs. Butters. Eileen lets him take his time, knows it’s his way, Inside the paper is another little white box, and Sam lifts off the lid and digs through the tissue paper. He doesn’t really know what to expect here.

His fingers hit something solid, and he pulls out a tiny pair of shoes.

They’re white with a white ribbon around them, and they look like they were knitted or crocheted or something. They’re the tiniest pair of shoes Sam’s ever seen, and that’s when it hits him.

They’re baby shoes.

Sam looks up at Eileen in shock. He doesn’t know what to say, let along what to think. Eileen smiles, but she looks as scared as she does happy. “See?” She says. “You’re so good with kids you made one.”

xXx

Once, a long time ago – probably about ten years or so now – Dean had asked Sam if he ever thought he’d want a wife, the rugrats. Sam told him it wasn’t in the cards. Not with the life they were living.

Now, in this house in Grantsburg, he stands, little white baby shoes sitting snug in the palm of his hand. In the next room, Gertie is watching _The Wizard of Oz_ , which is apparently a Christmas movie. Sam thinks of Kansas, nurseries with mothers pinned to the ceiling and brothers who will never get to meet his child. He thinks of Sioux Falls, the promise of love and new beginnings made in a dark bedroom. We live on in our legacies, and our children are our immortality. The trees we plant but never see grow sprout branches, they bud.

Life goes on. This was the proof.

In the glow of brightly colored Christmas lights and under the watchful gaze of a tree-topping angel, the munchkins welcome Dorothy to Munchkinland, and Sam kisses Eileen.

xXx

They go out to breakfast a couple days later and Sam just blurts it out.

“Will you marry me?”

Over a couple of short stacks.

Eileen’s eyebrows knit together. “Too fast,” she shakes her head. “What was that?”

Sam’s barely thinking, he’s just plowing ahead. They’re moving to Michigan, he’s going back to school, they’re going to have a baby. Why _not_ get married? He doesn’t even get to finish signing the question when Eileen cuts him off.

 _Yes_ , she signs. _Yes, yes, yes_. Over and over again.

xXx

Garth’s ordained in Wisconsin. Because of course he is.

xXx

They pull it together quickly. There’s no reason to wait, and they don’t want to. The next year will be busy enough without a wedding to plan on top of it. A different kind of busy. It’s amazing to Sam how quickly a wedding can come together: Garth calls in some favors at the church they went to for Christmas Eve mass, Bess takes Eileen to buy a dress, phone calls are placed to Jody and Donna and the girls as well as Charlie and several of the hunters Sam used to lead, and several of the Fitzgerald’s neighbors take over their kitchen. Sam and Eileen go to the local jeweler and buy their rings, and Sam surprises her with his mother’s engagement ring.

On the first day of the new year, sun streaming through the stained glass windows, they’re married.

xXx

It’s the same crowd as the one at Dean’s wake, but this time, people are asking for their new address in Ann Arbor and threatening to send them gifts instead of offering condolences. Miracle was given a new collar for the occasion, white with baby’s breath weaved through it. People are sitting around the piano singing songs – “Auld Lang Syne” and old hymns. Sam remembers one of them, “For the Beauty of the Earth”, one that he remembers Shirley singing to him and Dean.

_“For the joy of human love,_

_Brother, sister, parent, child,_

_Friends on earth, and friends above,_

_For all gentle thoughts and mild,_

_Lord of all, to thee we raise_

_This our hymn of grateful praise.”_

Sam has to step outside on the porch for a moment. He’s taken off his suit jacket and the air of the new year is crisp, stings when he breathes in too deeply, but makes him feel incredibly present. The sky above them is clear, dark, and full of stars. He’s looking for something, but he isn’t quite sure what. A sign, or something, that the ones he was missing today were with him. What kind of sign, Sam did not know. He doesn’t get one.

“Hey.”

Eileen looks beautiful. She’s smiling, hasn’t stopped all day, and she’s _glowing_. Sam reaches out a hand to her, and she takes it, joining him to look up at the sky. He unknowingly starts to run his thumb over the rings on her finger, the somewhat familiar diamond of his mother’s and the silver band that matches his. While Eileen looks to the heavens, Sam bends down and kisses the top of her head. She looks up at her husband with kind eyes.

“Things happen so quickly,” is all he says. “I love you.”

“Jody got us a KitchenAid,” is what she says in return. “Let’s go have some cake.”

xXx

The sign comes in the morning.

Literally. Sam and Eileen are packing to leave, even though Garth and Bess insist they can stay, but Sam and Eileen are ready to go. They’ve imposed on the Fitzgeralds enough, but they make them promise to come visit once they’re settled in Ann Arbor. So Bess packs leftovers and what’s left of the wedding cake, Eileen unwinds the flowers from Miracle’s collar, and Garth is getting the mail.

“Sam? There’s something for you.”

Garth is rightfully confused, Sam even more so. It’s a package, maybe about a foot long and a few inches wide, but what hits Sam harder than the surprise is the childlike handwriting on the front, and he feels his knees start to go and sinks down to sit on the steps.

“Sam?” Garth sounds nervous, but Sam can’t respond.

 _Mr. and Mrs. Winchester_ it says. Is _all_ it says. Not their address in Hastings, not their new address in Ann Arbor, not Garth and Bess’ address, not even a return address. Just names that they won’t use with anyone except their closest family and friends. Sam recovers and rips open the package, careful not to damage the writing on the front, and pulls out a white picture frame. Inside the frame, “For the Beauty of the Earth” is embroidered, delicate flowers framing the words to the hymn.

There’s a note.

_We’re in every tree and flower, every star, every day and every night. We’re in the words to this hymn. We are everywhere, and you are never alone. I love you. We love all of you. – Jack_

The K backwards and everything.


	3. Three is a Magic Number

_The past and the present and the future_

_Faith and hope and charity_

_The heart and the brain and the body_

_Give you three as a magic number_

\- “Three is a Magic Number”, Bob Dorough

xXx

Food was Dean’s love.

Words are Sam’s.

xXx

Sam and Dean used to watch _Schoolhouse Rock_ on Saturday mornings. No matter where they were, whether the breakfast was overflowing bowls of Lucky Charms or Shirley’s bacon and grits or nothing, they would watch Saturday morning cartoons and sing the songs, some of them becoming the extent of Dean’s education on certain subjects. Even as they got older, it wouldn’t be strange to overhear Dean or Sam singing “Mother Necessity” or “No More Kings” softly under their breath while they cleaned the guns or did the laundry.

They become lullabies.

xXx

In August, a baby boy is born.

xXx

They move to Ann Arbor in the spring. It’s a happy road trip, and they stop at rest stops to stretch their legs and revel in the warmer weather. 

The world is thawing. It is new again.

xXx

It’s funny – they’ve never stepped foot in the house before, but as soon as they do, Sam and Eileen know it’s home. Maybe it’s because it’s a choice they made together, a new start in a new place, but it just feels right from the jump. They clean, update, paint, and change the wallpaper. A devil’s trap goes under the rug and Sam puts his spellwork and research in the basement, in case he ever needs it. Eileen is apparently a sucker for flowers, and they start appearing all over the house. She spends days painstakingly painting the walls of the nursery with clouds, and they put glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Miracle gets a doghouse and a new bin of toys, but his silver dishes remain. Sam frames all the pictures – ones of him and his brother, his parents, Bobby, Jack, him and Eileen, the wedding, the girls, even the one he found stuck in the mirror in his father’s motel room during that case with the woman in white all those years ago. They go all over the house, but the majority of them go over the fireplace. 

Soon, there will be baby pictures.

xXx

The Impala is parked in the garage.

Dean was the one who could take care of her best, after all.

They get a hybrid. Something you could actually strap a car seat into.

xXx

The three (four?) of them go for walks around their new neighborhood. It’s quiet, near campus, but their neighborhood is mostly professors and grad students. The spring semester is wrapping up right as they move in, so it’s a quiet summer in Ann Arbor. They scout out dog- and baby-friendly parks and restaurants, try the sandwich shop Obama visited. Little League is in full swing, and they see ads for intrasquad Michigan football games well before August, but they’re going to be a little preoccupied around that time. Eileen keeps her eyes peeled for opportunities to work, but she’s not sure exactly what she’s looking for, so she isn’t pressed. Neighbors come over to meet them and give them baked goods, and they introduce themselves as Sam and Eileen Campbell. 

It becomes their home in no time at all.

xXx

The thought makes Sam feel guilty, sometimes.

But that doesn’t make it any less true.

xXx

Sometimes, they kick around the idea of going to church – Sam helped raise God, after all – but it never goes anywhere. Sam doesn’t need to wake up early on Sundays to be told how to love his son.

xXx

As her pregnancy goes on, Eileen spends more and more time in the baby’s nursery. Her mind wanders to all sorts of places it has never in her life wandered before, places she had never dreamed it would go. She stares at the clouds on the walls and the stars on the ceiling and wonders if their baby will have dark hair like them, or surprise them by being towheaded; if their eyes will be dark brown like hers or hazel like Sam’s; if they’ll be stoic and sweet like Little Cas, or fussy and fidgety like Little Sam.

In his quiet moments, maybe during a morning run with Miracle, Sam wonders along the same lines. He stares at the pictures on the walls and wonders if this baby will favor him or Eileen, if they will push against him as hard as Sam pushed against his own father, and even how tall they’ll grow to be.

Sam builds a crib and a bassinet and a changing table and bookshelves and wishes on all that is holy that his brother was here to do it with him – Dean was always the handy one. Sam can only hope he remembers enough, more than just how to fix ACs and unclog sinks.

xXx

It’s two weeks to the start of term when Eileen comes into the little library they’ve put together downstairs and tells Sam that if he doesn’t drive her to the hospital right this very instant, she will bite his head off and not feel any remorse for a very long time.

xXx

She doesn’t bite his head off.

But Eileen swears up and down that she will never, _never_ do that again.

xXx

In August, a baby boy is born.

Dean Henry Winchester the Second is legally Dean Henry Campbell, but the people closest to them know the baby’s true name. He’s tiny, tinier than Sam was expecting him to be, but Eileen says it felt like giving birth to a bowling ball. Little Dean comes with a hat, too, and Sam is so stunned by him that Eileen has to remind him that she wants to hold their son, too.

The name was Eileen’s idea. Sam didn’t even have to ask. Still, though, when he fills out the birth certificate as Eileen rocks baby Dean, a few tears fall onto the paperwork. The nurse is kind enough not to say anything. They seem to know better than to ask.

xXx

Sam thinks on where he was a year ago.

The people he lost then are still gone now. There would be no changing that. But at night, when it was his turn to get up, he would sit in the nursery under glow-in-the-dark stars and stare into beautiful brown eyes just like his wife’s and talk to Little Dean while Miracle slept at his feet.

“Do you know how loved you are?” He asks quietly, night after night. “You’d never believe how much if I told you. There are too many people to name. But it’s true. There will never be a day where you aren’t loved.”

Little Dean reaches out to him, and Sam kisses his little fingers.

xXx

A package comes from Bess with the note: _For when he grows up a bit :)_

Eileen pulls out overalls with _DEAN_ emblazoned on the pocket in gold thread.

xXx

Miracle takes to Little Dean as quickly as he did Big Dean. Miracle sleeps when the baby sleeps, sits under his highchair to clean up the food he flings around, and lets Dean tug at his ears and hug on him and ride on his back. Little Dean is a rambunctious boy, and there are days when Miracle is the only one who can keep up with him.

xXx

Life happens very quickly, and it doesn’t stop.

Little Dean is born in August and Sam almost immediately embarks on two years of study for the first time since he left Stanford to look for his father. It goes by quickly, of course. He comes home and Eileen is working in the yard while Dean and Miracle run around right under her feet, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Dean picks up on baby sign language quickly and doesn’t even bother to talk until he’s two years old and can already speak in full sentences. His mother takes a serious interest in gardening, and he plays with her in the dirt. In the summers they go to the lake and Dean takes to ripping off his swim diaper and running towards the water with reckless abandon. They still see Jody and Donna and the Fitzgeralds for holidays, rotating houses and desperately hanging on to each other. Sam and Eileen answer calls sometimes, from up-and-coming hunters who need some lore or a spell, but those calls become less frequent with each passing year. When Sam finishes his degree, he sometimes brings Dean along with him to the library he works at and reads to him – _Curious George, Eloise, Ferdinand the Bull, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Olivia,_ and every book of nursery rhymes and stories he can get his hands on.

Little Dean’s favorite stories, however, the ones he asks for time and again, are the ones about his uncle.

xXx

Eileen runs a towel through her son’s hair, and Dean’s face pops through, smiling at her, baring his baby teeth. He’s squeaky clean now and smells like baby shampoo and soap, and she can’t help but kiss the top of his damp head. Little Dean signs _I love you, I love you!_ over and over again. He does it all the time – he’s wild and loud, but people are always saying he’s the sweetest little boy they’ve ever met.

 _And I love you_ , Eileen signs back, and Little Dean is absolutely delighted. Sam and Eileen try to tell him that as much as they can, tell each other that as much as they can. Sam never said it enough to Dean, and neither of them said it to Cas and Jack, who even with their celestial status were never afraid to look either of them in the eye and tell them how much they loved the brothers. They had been too emotionally repressed to ever return the favor.

Sam recognizes the sounds of bedtime happening above his head. He’s sitting in the library, staring at the computer screen, an unopen email from a literary journal in New York staring back at him. He’s too chicken shit to open it. After a lot of convincing, he’s finally taken Eileen and their friends’ advice and started sending some of those old stories off – after some serious editing, of course – and his wife keeps encouraging him to write more. She’s gotten pretty bold in the past couple years, but then again, Eileen’s always known exactly who she was and what she’s looking for. Sam’s grateful every day that one of the things she was looking for was him.

He’s saved from learning his fate by the sound of little feet coming into the room, followed by Eileen, who still smells like the perfume she put on this morning. 

“Daddy, I have to go to bed now,” Dean tells his father solemnly. Bedtime used to be like pulling teeth with him, but he’s getting better – but Dean’s not happy about it.

“Alright,” Sam sighs dramatically, pushing away from the desk. “Then I guess we should get you to bed.”

Sam hoists Dean up onto his hip, and Eileen signs her thanks and something about catching up (“catching up”) with him later. Sam tosses her a wink and kisses her as he passes.

“You want a story?” Sam asks, going over to one of those bookshelves he built. It’s sturdy. Dean whines.

“Not one of _those_. I’ve heard all of those,” he complains. “I want a new one.”

This is the first time Sam’s heard this. Not that he’s sorry the kid wants new material – he and Eileen can only read _Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus_ and _Madeline_ so many times before they start to go insane – but it sort of leaves Sam at a loss. He was never good at pulling stories out of his ass the way Dean was; he had to sit with them, think on them, calculate every move the characters made. The shade of difference between a writer and a storyteller, he supposed; a writer is a storyteller, but a storyteller is not necessarily a writer, and Dean had all the necessary bells and whistles of the proverbial raconteur. Dean hadn’t been hung up on punctuation and watching out for run-on sentences, hadn’t been afraid to embellish or say anything to get the reaction he wanted.

That’s probably part of why people had usually liked him better. Or, at least, liked talked to him more.

Sam nods slowly at Little Dean and crawls into his bed, sitting the fidgety kid on his lap. “You know your Uncle Dean, right?”

Little Dean lights up and nods. “Yes! He’s the one on the wall. When I sees him, I say I gots his same name, and he says he knows that, and then we say I love you this much,” and Dean spreads his little arms as wide as they can go. “Which is lots and lots.”

“It is,” Sam agrees. “He does love you a lot. A lot of people do, even though you can’t see them.” Dean knows this – Sam and Eileen tell him so all the time. He asks why he doesn’t have a grandma and grandpa to go visit, and they tell him that they can’t be with him right now, but they think about him and watch him and know he’s going to do great things. “But did you know your Uncle Dean and I used to work together?”

Little Dean furrows his brow and shakes his head, floppy blond hair going everywhere. “He go’d to the libarry, too?”

“No,” Sam shakes his head, and he leans in like he’s telling a secret. “Your Uncle Dean was a superhero.”

The little boy’s eyes widen. “Like Batman?” He whispers back, and Sam nods. “So you’re a superhero, too!”

Sam laughs a little. “Not exactly.”

“So you’re like Robin?”

“Sure,” Sam drawls. “If Uncle Dean was Batman, I was Robin, and the car in the garage was the Batmobile.” Little Dean knows he’s not allowed in the garage because there’s lots and lots of sharp stuff in there that can hurt him, but he knows what’s in there. There’s a big black car that never gets driven, never goes anywhere, is sleeping. “And we used to drive all over the place and help people.” Sam smiles slow. “One time, we even met a giant teddy bear.”

Dean smiles that sweet, boyish grin at his daddy, and Sam knows he’s got him.

xXx

Sam and Eileen, uh, _catch up_ later.

“Giant teddy bears, huh?” She asks as they lay together, playing with each other’s fingers and hair. Sam huffs a laugh.

 _The shit we saw could fill a book_.

xXx

Multiple books, really.

Their stories already have.

xXx

More than once, Sam sits at the breakfast table with his laptop in front of him, Eileen gently coaxing Dean to put the food in his mouth instead of the dog’s, and reads rejection letters. He gets told he’s good, but that the current market isn’t looking for what he has to offer. Sam doesn’t know what the hell that means. He knows all the new arrivals, sees them come into the library when he ventures out of the research sections, and knows half of it is crap. Sam can say with a confidence he doesn’t usually have that his stuff is better.

“I don’t know what the hell they’re looking for,” Sam grumbles, and Eileen rubs his shoulder sympathetically.

“Don’t give up,” she tells him. “There are tons of places you can look into sending your work to. Great writers get rejected all the time,” Eileen reminds him. Sam doesn’t think he’s a _great_ writer, but if he’s going to put himself out there it’d be nice to get more than rejection letters.

“Yeah, I guess,” he sighs, running his hands through his hair. He checks his watch – the one Dean used to wear – and closes his laptop. “What are you two getting up to today?” Sam asks, changing the subject. Eileen’s taking Dean with her to her meeting with the school board about improving the ASL program and disability services, and then they’ll come back and grab Miracle to go to the park down the block. Sam’s helping Little Dean get his shoes on when the kid says,

“If nobody likes your stories you can try telling them the teddy bear story.”

Eileen tells Dean that’s not true, people like Daddy’s stories, but Sam thinks the kid might be onto something.

xXx

There’s more than just giant suicidal teddy bears, obviously.

Sam omits the gory details, but he tells Little Dean about getting sucked into _Scooby-Doo,_ about fighting against action figures and making bombs out of lunchboxes, playing by cartoon rules, a magic rabbit’s foot that made him lose his shoe, dressing up as cowboys and high-noon shootouts, wrestling matches and monster fight clubs. Little Dean listens with rapt attention, asks questions and _What happened next?_ and Eileen is a little ticked off that Sam’s stories have become so popular that she can’t get away with reading _Where the Wild Things Are_ and be done with it.

But what she doesn’t mind, the thing that keeps her listening at the door, is that as Sam tells their son these stories, what he’s doing is more than just entertaining him – he’s keeping them all alive. At their core, these aren’t stories about time travel and fighting bad guys. They’re about a girl named Charlie who wanted to save the Emerald City; a grumpy old mechanic named Bobby who seemed to know everything; a mother and daughter named Ellen and Jo who wanted nothing more than to help; a boy named Kevin who wanted to be the first Asian-American president of the United States. They’re about Grandma and Grandpa, who did their best and couldn’t cook but still tried anyway; a group of women who saved them from certain disaster time and time again; a boy named Jack who was with them every day and whose teddy bear Little Dean was holding right now; an angel named Castiel who followed bees and spoke to animals. All of them, immortalized.

And Uncle Dean.

xXx

But Little Dean knows all about Big Dean.

Uncle Dean is everywhere, in everything. Not in the same way Jack is, who Little Dean always remembers to say goodnight to because Mommy and Daddy say he can hear him. No, Uncle Dean isn’t just in the pictures, either. He can be heard when they play music on his old record player – _Zeppelin IV, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Dark Side of the Moon, A Night at the Opera, Stranger in Town, Let It Bleed, Back in Black,_ and even _The Concert for Bangladesh_ , which Sam says is their version of going to church. When Daddy makes ooey-gooey grilled cheese or Mommy makes a pie, that’s Dean, too. When they watch the Jayhawks during March Madness and the Wolverines play football at Michigan Stadium, he’s watching with them. 

The dead are never really gone. Not as long as one works every day to keep their memory alive.

It’s cliché, but it’s cliché because it’s true.

xXx

Tell them about the teddy bear, the kid said.

Sam stares at a blank word document. It’s late, and Eileen has already gone to bed, but Sam can’t turn his brain off. He’s been pissed at Chuck Shurley for a lot of things, but tonight, he’s pissed at him for stealing his story and profiting off it – if anyone was gonna profit off his tragedy, it was Sam Winchester, dammit. 

He switches to Google, searches for the _Supernatural_ books. The last book – unpublished, but still the last – is some shit called _Swan Song_ , and it’s about Sam jumping into the Pit with Michael and Lucifer. Clearly, their story has never been a hot sell in the literary market.

But it wasn’t _all_ monsters.

It was…

What was it?

Sam goes back to the word document.

_It was empty laundromats at midnight, the two of us stripped down to our boxers and playing for the quarters that would just go into the machines. The world’s first, second, third largest balls of twine would pass by the window while my brother navigated to the back roads of this too-big, too-beautiful country that he knew like the back of his hand. We got food poisoning from diners in every state in the Union. I sat next to him for years in that car from a bygone era of America, a metallic monster from the Summer of Love. I went back and forth between thinking of it as an interruption to my plans and the life I was going to be forever stuck with, and the only thing that made either of those possibilities okay was that it was my brother I was getting dragged along with._

_He was Beth March in a leather jacket and a beer in his hand. His plans were never any grander than family dinners and trips to the Grand Canyon, and his heart never strayed far from home even as we travelled east to west, north to south, day after day and year after year. Nothing hurt my brother more than being left behind, and in the end, he was the one who left me behind…._

xXx

Sam eventually crawls into bed, feeling like he maybe hasn’t blinked in a few hours. Eileen stirs when he flops down beside her, rolls over and raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Sam whispers, and she can barely read his lips, but she can guess what he’s saying.

 _Okay?_ She asks.

Sam smiles. _Yes,_ he replies honestly. _We’re getting somewhere good._

_We were always going to._

xXx

The first story of Sam’s that gets accepted is the one about the waitress. Little Dean and Miracle are napping on the rug, curled around each other, so Sam just sits in stunned silence.

He’s never been published before. Of course he hasn’t, but still. He’s being published. It’s a small thing, _but still_.

Everyone at work congratulates him. They all want copies, and Sam bashfully thanks them and promises to get his hands on the next edition. Eileen is over the moon, claims a little credit because that one was her favorite, and says they should celebrate. Little Dean enthusiastically agrees, even though he has no idea what it is they’re celebrating.

They’re sitting on the couch that night, a Ken Burns documentary playing on PBS in the background, and Eileen says, “I think, maybe, what the market is looking for is stories about people.”

Well, gee – Sam’s got plenty of those.

xXx

Sam loves his parents, but it’s a complicated love, so it’s not surprising that in the end, he learned how to be a dad from Dean. Father, mother, brother. Little Dean doesn’t grow up the same way – Daddy is Daddy and Mommy is Mommy and Miracle is the closest thing he has to a brother, but Little Dean is more than happy to not have to fight a sibling for his parents’ attention. No one has to pull more weight than they should.

To be fair, the older he gets, the more aware Dean becomes that his parents aren’t like the other guys’ parents. Sure, they do a lot of the things normal parents do, like come to his Little League games and laugh at his school productions and go to work. Mom goes to PTA meetings and Dad comes home smelling like book glue. Dad’s not a big fan of Halloween, but there’s Thanksgiving and Christmas to celebrate every year – a Christmas card, even, that Mom writes an accompanying newsletter for. His parents go to faculty parties and play Scrabble with the neighbors. Sometimes there are dinner parties where Dad politely answers questions about the people in the pictures on the wall. But Dean knows his parents are the only ones who sometimes go shooting on the weekends, who know a little too much about too many different mythological creatures, who keep a shitload of salt in the basement, and Dean knows for a fact that none of his buddies dads practice witchcraft. And Dean knows the reason for all these things; he just keeps them to himself. He wants no part of the life that took so much from his parents.

All the kids with faculty parents can attest to having parents that are a little weird. They’re either obsessed with black holes or obscure translations of Italian poets or one singular movement from a Beethoven symphony. A wee bit obsessive. Many of Dean’s friends grow up in multilingual households (Dean himself is fluent in ASL and pretty familiar with Latin), spend several weeks during the summer at field school, or know obscure facts about Herbert Hoover and all the other mediocre presidents. Dean’s parents are known throughout Ann Arbor for their intense Trivial Pursuit nights; his mother for the pies she raffles off at fundraisers and the community garden she runs; and his father for the book he wrote about his fifteen year-long road trip that he took with his brother between 2005 and 2020.

Sam Campbell became a bit of a local celebrity after it was published. _All the Marvelous Things We Planned_ was lauded in some circles as being a better road trip novel than even Kerouac’s _On the Road_ , especially since it’s a true story, and several literature professors at Michigan had the book on their syllabus. But to Dean, Sam was just his dad, the same dad who forgot his glasses on top of his head and got lost in the bookstacks at his library. Sam himself didn’t always love the attention – he always told people who wrote the book because he had a lot to say, and it needed to be said somewhere.

And he didn’t want the people he loved to go forgotten, least of all his big brother.

xXx

 _All the Marvelous Things We Planned_ begins with death and ends with birth: the death of Dean ~~Winchester~~ Campbell, and the birth of Dean Campbell. It leaves out all the monsters, all the blood and guts and many of the deaths in-between, but includes all the most important things. As Sam had explained it to his son, even after you strip away all the supernatural crap, it’s still a story.

“A story about what, though?” Dean asked.

“About family,” Sam told him. “It’s a story about family. And America, I guess.”

xXx

_We used to stay in the worst motel rooms. That had always been the case, a couple of army brats and their Marine father moving around from place to place. There were apartments and rental houses, but the motels stick out the most, probably because of how goddamn ugly some of them were. Dad would travel for work, and Dean and I would stay behind. Dean would watch the door for a few moments after Dad slammed it shut, thinking of – what? He would never say. He kept things like that to himself, but I could only imagine he was worrying about how we would eat, pay the rent or the fee for the room, if he should even bother going to school the next day. He never told me these things. Dean never told me a lot things. When we came together again as sort of-adults, these issues were less of a concern. We saw the best and worst of what America’s motor courts had to offer. In the end, though, home was that car of his, but only if the two of us were sitting in it._

Dean can see why people like the book.

xXx

This story and _All the Marvelous Things We Planned_ may _begin_ the same way, but they don’t end the same way. That’s because books always have to end somewhere; life, however, goes on.

xXx

Dean grows up loving baseball. His namesake had never really followed it, but Sam says he was doing his grandfather proud. Dean doesn’t know much about his grandfather, mostly because he’s dead and his dad, though he loves him, has a hard time talking about him. He always gets choked up. So Dean stopped asking. 

Dad was the one who played catch with him in the backyard growing up, so Dean gives him most of the credit for his love of the game, not his grandfather. Which is weird, because his dad likes soccer.

His freshman year, they come home from the high school after one of his games. It’s not spring without baseball, and it’s the first win of the season. Dean’s white baseball pants are covered in grass stains and red dirt, his face streaked with sweat and black undereye paint, but he’s more happy than he is tired as he trudges up the stairs to take a shower. Mom’s making dinner – smells like meatloaf, probably made from ground turkey because his parents are health junkies, and stuff from the garden – and Dad is reading over a story one of his friends in the creative writing department wrote. Dean’s bathroom is out of shampoo, so he heads for his parent’s bedroom to borrow some. Only, when he gets there, he finds a guy in a white jacket petting Miracle, who’s panting happily on the bed.

“What the hell?”

The guy spins around, looking guilty, and Dean squints at him – he thinks he recognizes him. “I-I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I was just – “

“Jack?” Dean asks.

Jack’s shoulders relax and he smiles a little. “Yes,” he breathes. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

Dean knows the truth about Jack. He had grown up saying goodnight to him, looking up at the stars and waiting for a response he never got. But still, even to this day, even if just in his head, Dean said goodnight to his brother. His brother, God.

Jack didn’t make it into the book. It would have been a little hard to explain raising God.

“Your pants are dirty,” Jack says before Dean can speak again. “Do you know how to…slide?”

“Uh…yeah,” Dean says. “Um. What are you doing here, Jack?” Dean is too shocked to be happy to see him. At least for now. He looks at Miracle – he was getting older, but Dean hadn’t thought anything was wrong with him. “You’re not…you’re not here for – “

“No, no, Miracle is fine,” Jack assures him, and smiles wider. “I remember when Dean found him. They were so happy to find each other. I’m glad that he has had a home with you all these years. Miracle loves the three of you very much. You’ve taken him on many adventures.”

“Guess I have,” Dean mutters.

“I just…” Jack shrugs. “Things in Heaven are reasonably quiet for now. I just…I missed you all, missed Earth. I wanted to say hello.”

Dean nods at this. Shower forgotten, he whistles for Miracle and nods his head towards the door. “Then come say hello.”

xXx

“Dad?”

Sam looks up and sees his son standing there, still in his uniform, hair a mess. He looks…off. “What’s up, dude?”

Dean doesn’t say anything, just steps aside.

And Jack is there.

Sam’s mouth goes dry. Jack, of course, hasn’t changed. He looks just like he did the day he left, is wearing the same outfit, even. He and Dean are roughly the same height, though like Sam with his big brother, Dean will likely surpass him someday soon. Sam slowly rises from the chair, and for some reason, Jack looks nervous.

Jack raises a hand.

“Hello.”

xXx

Sam and Jack hug for a long, long time. When Eileen finds the three of them, they have no idea how long.

xXx

Eileen insists Jack stays for dinner. Jack doesn’t really need to eat, and he’s always preferred candy anyways, but he still sits down at the dinner table with them – the first time he’s done so in a long time, and he looks positively pleased about it. Sam, Eileen, and Dean are all looking between each other with raised eyebrows and smirks, none of them still quite sure what Jack is doing here but happy to see him, nonetheless. While they eat, Jack fills the room with his talk, carrying on the way he once did when he was happy.

“Heaven is amazing. When I got there, I knew I had a lot of work to do, so I broke down all the walls and made it so people could see each other whenever they wanted and weren’t just stuck with memories. People were happy before, I think, but they’re much happier now. I’ve met so many wonderful people, but mostly, if I’m visiting, I go see my mother. She lives in the little house I was born in, and it looks out at the water, and sometimes we go swimming. I really like swimming. I think we should have done it more when we were all together. What’s also nice is that you can be in a place that looks like, say, Washington, and in a few steps be in a place that looks like New York, or Tokyo. People miss Earth because it’s all they ever know, and they never get to do everything they plan, so I wanted to give them a chance to see the world if they wanted. A lot of people stay near the homes they make because the people they love most are close by. Your parents, for instance. They live in a house that looks like the one you and Dean grew up in. It’s very nice. I like the wallpaper.” He looks around. “I like the wallpaper here, too.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Eileen says.

“It was. But I had help from Cas.”

Sam’s eyes bulge. “ _Cas?_ You mean, he’s not in the Empty anymore?”

Jack tilts his head. “Of course not. He’s my father. I wouldn’t just leave him there. He and I…we spend a lot of time together, as well. Sometimes he comes and watches me swim, or we just…exist together.” Jack smiles at this. Sam looks to Eileen, and she smiles at him, too. He can relax a little, knowing that Jack isn’t alone up there, that he has his mother and father and –

“What’s Uncle Dean up to?” Little Dean asks. It’s funny, because Little Dean knows he loves his uncle even though he’s never met him, but it doesn’t hurt to talk about him like it does for Sam. Dean sometimes wonders how his dad can talk about his brother at all.

Jack looks to Sam for reassurance, and Sam nods. Yes, he misses his brother, of course. But life has marched on – it had to. It may still hurt, but nowhere near as bad as it did before. And, he has to admit, he’s curious, too.

“Not much,” Jack admits. “Time…it’s different in Heaven. He had a drink with Bobby and then just started driving, and he hasn’t stopped. I think he’s…waiting for something.”

xXx

At the end of the night, Jack and Dean go outside with Miracle, tossing the ball around, and Sam and Eileen watch from the window as they do the dishes. For just a moment, Sam allows himself to believe that it’s like this every night, that the four of them come home and have dinner and the boys go out back with the dog and they’re just…together.

He doesn’t let himself believe it for very long.

“What’s going on in that big head of yours?”

Sam readjusts his glasses. “Nothin’.”

“Liar.”

Eileen looks at him knowingly – kindly, but knowingly, and Sam sighs. There’s no hiding anything from her. There’s never been a point in him trying. “I just…I’m really happy to see Jack. It’s been so long, but it feels like it’s been no time at all. I saw him and I never wanted to let go of him.”

“But?”

 _But…_. “I’m thinking about Dean, too,” he says quietly. “Just driving around up there.”

“Did you expect any different?”

She has a point. “Well, I don’t know. But it sounds lonely, doesn’t it?”

It does. It sounds _incredibly_ lonely. But one day, Dean will be ready to face going home. Sam’s just sorry he’s going to make him wait so long because Sam isn’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon. He likes where he is, there’s no point in denying it. Sam looks out the window, and sees Jack, for the first time in years, and he’s smiling and talking Dean’s ear off; he sees Dean, much more patient with Jack’s spiels than Big Dean usually ever was, sees how he’s showing Jack how to use the ball gloves to catch and smiles when Jack figures it out; he sees Miracle, running back and forth between them, slobbering and demanding pets.

He looks around the house, with the flower wallpaper that Jack apparently likes and the wall where they mark Dean’s height. His mother, his father, his brother…Bobby and Kevin and Charlie and Cas and Jack…they all watch over them from their spots on the walls. Little Dean used to look up at Big Dean and spread his arms wide, sign _I love you!_ to him every day and know that was enough. When Sam looks at pictures of his brother, he sends him all the love he had deserved to feel when he was on Earth. Sam doesn’t know if it gets to him, but he hopes it does. He hopes on all that is holy that it does.

“I just wish I could tell him how much I miss him,” Sam whispers, signing it as well because he’s not sure if Eileen caught that.

She throws soapy hands around his waist, and Sam holds onto her for dear life. He thinks of years ago, of sitting outside her house in Hastings, Miracle sleeping next to him, and now they were here. After everything, after all of it, they were _here_. They were so fucking alive it made Sam’s head spin. He presses the sign for _I love you_ into her back, not wanting to pull away.

“He knows, Sam,” she says into his chest. “And one day, you’ll get to tell him about all the wonderful things that happened.”

A few tears leak out, bittersweet and salty, and Sam squeezes her tighter, his shirt growing damp with dishwater.

xXx

In the morning, Jack is gone. Sam sits out on the back porch with a cup of coffee, no doubt thinking about Jack (and Dean, and Cas), Miracle sitting next to him, and they watch the sunrise. Eileen watches them through the glass door, not sure if she should be worried or not. They were all glad to see Jack, but what if his visit had undone the last fifteen years of progress, of grieving, of healing? They had someday to look forward to, but _someday_ was a very vague date for a reunion. 

She feels a hand on her shoulder. It’s Dean. He’s rocking some serious bedhead, but his eyes look clear and follow Eileen’s gaze to the porch out back. _Is he going to be okay?_

Eileen watches her husband for another few moments. He turns his head as he’s carding his fingers through Miracle’s fur and smiles at the dog, and Miracle seems to smile back. The sunlight glints off his glasses, and there’s grey at his roots and temples. Later this morning, he’ll get dressed and go to the library for a few hours, then come home and maybe do some writing. Sam and Dean might head down the block and play catch for a while, and Miracle will follow Eileen around the yard as she plants the primroses, the tulips, the daffodils. They’re going next door to have dinner and play Scrabble this evening. Sam and Eileen are fifteen years into this marriage, fifteen years into parenthood, and every morning when they first see each other, they still smile, still sign _good morning_ , still kiss each other like they _mean_ it.

So Eileen is confident in her answer. She kisses her son’s cheek, and he tries to be discreet about wiping his face. As usual, he fails. _Yes. He already is._

And he is. And they are.

xXx

There’s one more thing.

Well – two.

There are three things framed above Sam and Eileen’s bed:

One is from the day of their wedding, the two of them standing at the doors of the church on New Years Day, surrounded by snow and smiling more genuinely than most people do in pictures. Happiness always comes through, and by the way Sam is looking at Eileen and by the way she’s got him round the waist, anyone who sees the picture knows instinctively that they love each other, are probably jealous.

Another one is the embroidered “For the Beauty of the Earth.” It has not faded with time, the white frame still perfectly intact, and Dean often hears his father humming it as he walks around the house. He hums a lot of songs – “Stairway to Heaven”, “Three is a Magic Number”, "Awaiting on You All", Pachelbel’s Canon in D, and anything by Johnny Cash or The Beatles or The Smiths – but he once told Dean that even though they didn’t go to church, he still prayed, and that had always been his favorite hymn, one that a woman named Shirley used to sing to him and his brother. In a house surprisingly full of music, the song Little Dean remembers best from his childhood is this one, knows the words from reading them over and over, from his father singing it to him when he woke up scared. It’s imprinted on his heart.

The last one is the piece of the cardboard package the embroidered hymn came in that reads “Mr. and Mrs. Winchester” in Jack’s childish handwriting, and next to it is the note in that same handwriting, a little white slip of paper reminding them that even if they can’t see them, the people they have lost will always be with them.

xXx

The last thing, the very last thing you need to know, is that the dedication page for _All the Marvelous Things We Planned_ reads:

_“I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.” And on Earth, too._

_For Eileen and Dean._

_Oh, and Dean – it’s still okay. One day, I’ll tell you all about it._

**Author's Note:**

> Stay healthy, stay safe, wear a mask, and thanks for reading!


End file.
